Friday, March 23, 2012

Mrs. tcnorris was at the NDP leadership convention today with a friend, and they report that, overall, the speeches and presentations were positive. Two stood out particularly: Paul Dewar's show was far and away the strongest, while she did not like Brian Topp's efforts.

It occurred to TC, however, that the speeches and demonstrations weren't important. As this Hill Times article noted, "55,659 New Democrats across the country had cast online or mail-in ballots by Friday morning". That is easily going to be a majority of all votes cast. In principle it would have made more sense to hold the events of today a week ago (if one could ignore the logistics).

In previous delegated conventions speeches rarely mattered, even perhaps when they should have, despite the fact that all those then listening could have changed their minds.

The lesson here is that unless the final outcome is exceptionally close, the convention dynamics this weekend won't matter (for example, candidates dropping off and supporting another candidate still on the ballot). You may not get that impression from the media coverage.